Arch Linux

spirit369

Member

Registered: 2019-02-13

Posts: 10

[SOLVED] Display gets colored "snow" pixels sometimes (AMD Radeon GPU)

Hi friends and experts :-)

I am using Archlinux with Cinnamon desktop, with an AMD Radeon GPU.

I have a very annoying problem with my display, it doesn't happen all the time and I am not sure what *exactly* causes it. Sometimes it happens once a week, and sometimes (like today) several times a day.

It usually happens when a video is related, e.g. I play games (like teeworlds) or play a movie in vlc. After some time (even after I quit vlc) - the screen becomes slow or lagged, and then suddenly the display becomes like the tv-snow colored pixels and I have no option but to hard reset my computer. Sometimes I press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal (without really seeing what I'm doing) and type "reboot" and it works (so the computer is not stuck).

Before the snow starts, I usually "feel" that things are lagged, like YouTube video is VERY SLIGHTLY lagged each ~5 seconds and I am sensitive enough to sense that.

I could not find and related problem in dmesg/journalctl and have no idea what else to do with this.

I don't think that it's a problem with my GPU as I didn't/don't have such problems when I boot into my Windows OS.
Also, I constantly monitor the GPU/CPU temperatures, and it doesn't seem to be causing it.

I also notice that when Chromium has animated gifs open (on some websites) - it lags my computer as I mentioned earlier. It doesn't matter if I disable hw acceleration in Chromium or not.

I tried to "play" with the drivers and related packages but it doesn't seem to change anything. Currently, what I have installed is:
xf86-video-amdgpu
xf86-video-ati
xf86-video-fbfdev
xf86-video-vesa
mesa-vdpau
libva-mesa-driver
(even if I remove them all - it still happens)

I wonder if someone is having the same problem, or if you have any suggestions. I REALLY NEED IT!

Many thanks

Last edited by spirit369 (2019-03-08 01:37:49)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,672

Re: [SOLVED] Display gets colored "snow" pixels sometimes (AMD Radeon GPU)

Which exact video card and driver do you have? Try the usual kernel driver config options, in particular https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AM … cy_problem and/or

amdgpu.dc=0 amdgpu.audio=0 amdgpu.dpm=0 amdgpu.aspm=0 amdgpu.runpm=0 amdgpu.bapm=0

on your kernel parameters, to disable the power management/DC code display sink. Should the kernel parameters fix it, start removing options until you've found a potentially single culprit

spirit369

Member

Registered: 2019-02-13

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Display gets colored "snow" pixels sometimes (AMD Radeon GPU)

Thanks for your reply!

I will try to set these parameters later when I arrive home.

As for the card, it's Radeon R7 240/340.

Question;
In lspci I see that the amdgpu and radeon drivers are installed, but the active driver is only "radeon". Is it still relevant to add these settings that related to the amdgpu driver?

I will give these settings few days and post an update whether it helped.

Many many thanks!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,672

Re: [SOLVED] Display gets colored "snow" pixels sometimes (AMD Radeon GPU)

If it is using radeon, these settings won't help, BUT you could try switching to amdgpu as opposed to radeon instead: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AM … parameters

Or play with the equivalent radeon module options (apart from the .dc one, they all exist on radeon as well)

spirit369

Member

Registered: 2019-02-13

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Display gets colored "snow" pixels sometimes (AMD Radeon GPU)

I was unable to switch to amdgpu Tried to blacklist radeon or add amdgpu to MODULES in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf... failed.

Anyway, I tried now to disable dpm [first] as you suggested, by setting radeon.dpm=0 in grub.
I can see in journalctl that dpm is not loaded after this change. I will see if that solves the problem - thanks!

By the way:
* Is there other way to check dpm status besides checking journalctl?
* Is it possible to disable it without grub? (I tried /etc/modprob.d/radeon_no_dpm.conf and sysctl.d .... didn't work)

Thanks

Last edited by spirit369 (2019-02-26 18:53:31)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,056

Re: [SOLVED] Display gets colored "snow" pixels sometimes (AMD Radeon GPU)

You got to issue "radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1" to run amdgpu on this chip.

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spirit369

Member

Registered: 2019-02-13

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Display gets colored "snow" pixels sometimes (AMD Radeon GPU)

Thanks!
I switched from radeon to the amdgpu driver and left the dpm untouched... If problem continues, I'll disable amdgpu.dpm.
Will update this topic in few days.
Thank you very much for your help, very appreciated!

spirit369

Member

Registered: 2019-02-13

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Display gets colored "snow" pixels sometimes (AMD Radeon GPU)

Update:
Problem was solved by switching from radeon driver to amdgpu.

Thanks